Ex-CEO of Avanade Joins Cloud Startup, Opscode.

“Opscode, a young Seattle company that sells cloud-computing management services, has added some executive firepower to help manage its growth—co-founder Jesse Robbins is handing over chief executive duties to Mitch Hill, founding CEO of tech-services company Avanade.

Robbins, an Amazon.com veteran, is staying on board as chief community officer to guide work on Chef, Opscode’s open-source IT management software. And no, Robbins says, this isn’t one of those entrepreneur nightmares where the investors and board members jam a new executive down the founders’ throats.

Opscode makes it easier for companies to add cloud computing power by automating a lot of related tasks. Say your company wants to add more computing power—with big vendors like Amazon Web Services and Rackspace, that’s pretty easy. But someone still has to make sure all of those fancy new servers work with your existing computer systems. In the past, that could have meant a lot of tedious coding.”